{"id":441867,"date":"2026-08-24T09:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441867\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T09:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:34:10","slug":"california-ag-bonta-cancels-settlement-meeting-with-paramount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/441867\/","title":{"rendered":"California AG Bonta Cancels Settlement Meeting With Paramount"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere will be no settlement talks meeting Monday between Paramount<\/a> and a coalition of state Attorneys General after all. <\/p>\n

\n\tCalifornia AG Rob Bonta<\/a> cancelled the scheduled sit-down late Sunday after reports of an August 21 meeting with the David Ellison<\/a>-led company oozed out. More galling to Bonta is that what was discussed at that meeting about a meeting slipped out into the public sphere. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot only did Paramount leak the alleged substance of settlement discussions, but they misrepresented these discussions, demonstrating a lack of good faith,\u201d the AG said in a statement provided to Deadline in the midnight hour. \u201cAs soon as Paramount stops playing games and engages sincerely, my office is happy to meet again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNews of behind the scenes talks in the bitter battle over Paramount\u2019s $111 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery<\/a> were actually first confirmed publicly by none other than Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a>. \u201cI know there are many meetings that are going on, and there\u2019s a lot of conversation,\u201d the presumed 2028 presidential candidate said on August 21. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt should be noted that Deadline actually heard details of the August 21 preliminary gathering to set the agenda for the August 24 meeting from a variety of sources, if you know what I mean?<\/p>\n

\n\tThough expectations for the August 24 meeting were \u201cintentionally low,\u201d sources told Deadline Sunday, there seemed to be several hot ticket items on the table for the parties. <\/p>\n

\n\tSpecifically, representatives of the 12 state AGs who sued Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery in an antitrust<\/a> action on July 13 wanted CEO Ellison to sell a swath of WBD\u2019s still lucrative cable channel stable. As well, the elected officials sought to have Paramount and WB remain two separate studios, with Donald Trump pal Ellison ( and to some extent his father and backer Larry Ellison) practically cordoned off from running the place he just bought.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDavid\u2019s not going to go along with any of that, and Bonta knows it,\u201d a studio exec told Deadline Sunday of the discussion points put on the table. Clear non-starters with Ellison and Para execs, the agenda points also reflect the wide figurative and literal distance between the AGs, their lawsuit partners the WGA<\/a> and the Melrose lot. <\/p>\n

\n\tParamount did not respond early Monday to request for comment on Bonta\u2019s pulling of the meeting plug. The New York Times first reported the meeting cancellation. <\/p>\n

\n\tUrged by the likes of Gov. Newsom, flip-flopping L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, the DGA, IATSE<\/a>, \u00a0Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra,<\/a> and others to sit down and hammer out a settlement, the AGs and Paramount\/WBD have been set by a federal judge to go to trial on March 2, 2027.<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"David<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDavid Ellison, Chairman & CEO, Paramount Skydance <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Bonta decrying leaks of Ellison moving Paramount Skydance to Georgia, Texas or Tennessee<\/a> if the ParaBros merger doesn\u2019t see significant talks or resolution by October 1 as \u201cblackmail,\u201d the bitterness between the two has become as much a corporate and political showdown as a legal one. The CEO penning NYT op-eds i<\/a>nsisting it is all about CNN, didn\u2019t help the healing process. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe already reinforced battlefronts became all the more stark over the past week with Paramount ignoring federal Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin\u2019s earlier implied rejection of any bond from the states and asking for a $1.88 billion bond to offset the \u201cextraordinary losses\u201d the suit could cost the company. Add to that another report submitted to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on August 19 <\/a>spotlighting \u201cabout 4,500 TV and film jobs ..could be lost.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe L.A. County Department of Economic Opportunity also estimates thousands of more indirect and industry adjacent jobs will be wiped out by the more than $80 billion debt carry ParaBros. The bigger picture puts another consequence of the merger being the loss of wages in the billions and the region losing $547 million in tax revenue. <\/p>\n

\n\tNo further settlement meetings had been put on the calender beyond today.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne source said to Deadline the fight between Paramount and Bonta is all a \u201cgame of PR chicken.\u201d If so, then someone just blinked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There will be no settlement talks meeting Monday between Paramount and a coalition of state Attorneys General after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[86277,7,9,8,21405,457,120884,6336,121957,2794,26368,90910,3707],"class_list":["post-441867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-antitrust","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-david-ellison","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-iatse","tag-paramount","tag-paramount-wbd","tag-rob-bonta","tag-warner-bros-discovery","tag-wga","tag-xavier-becerra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}